|
Hebrew
gravestone inscriptions from Jewish cemeteries from the region called Raysn (mostly
in current Belarus and
partially in Ukraine)
are studied as a historical source and a literature genre. The epitaphs
express the idea of a connection between the ideal world of Scripture and
religious Hebrew books and the world of everyday life of a shtetl or community. This can be traced at several
levels. First, at the level of inscriptions’ structure, the epitaph includes
an indication of the place (“here lies”), time (date), and name, thus tying
the deceased to a specific “coordinate system”. Second, biblical quotations
emphasize the relation of a particular life and death to the situation with
that described in the Bible. Third, at the language level, despite the fact that
epitaphs are almost always written in Hebrew and not in Yiddish, we are
dealing with certain features of Hebrew—Yiddish bilingualism. Hebrew terms
could simultaneously be Yiddish lexemes. We observe orthography
code-switching between Hebrew consonant spelling and Yiddish phonetic
spelling, depending on whether the concept is found in Hebrew holy books or
in everyday life. Fourth, epitaphs occupy an intermediate position between
the “high”, author's literature and canonical religion, on the one hand, and folk
literature and religion, on the other hand. The difference between the
epitaphs from Ukraine and Belarus
is discussed.
|